Love and Decay Read Online Free Page A

him. Waiting. “Diego,” he said. “And
I just saved your life. Again.”

Chapter Two
     
    Diego was my most blurred memory of our time
in Mexico. I remembered Luke and his family with clarity. I had no
trouble recollecting my time with the slavers or the cannibals.
Both had been traumatic enough to imprint on me for life. I could
close my eyes and imagine every detail of my kidnapping.
    But Diego? Apparently he’d been the least
threatening of all our Mexican adventures.
    Although that wasn’t exactly true. He’d run
the Mexican Territories for a decade. With our help, he’d taken out
all of the other overlords and claimed this land for himself.
People feared him. Zombies obeyed him. Even the cannibals fled.
    His rule was almost as legendary as
Matthias’s and my family’s friendship with him just as notorious.
My brothers had dropped his name all over South America and it had
worked. People listened to the threat of Diego. They quaked in
terror. And jumped to please us because we were associated with
him.
    But they didn’t know what I knew.
    What my family knew.
    Diego had as much territory as he wanted.
Yes, he’d fought hard for northern Mexico and that hard work had
paid off in a big way.
    But Diego wasn’t interested in expanding his
empire. He was content to control the small portion of the world he
already had.
    Not that we would tell anyone that. We’d
guard his secret. And use it whenever it benefited us.
    Diego jumped down from the boulder he’d used
as a platform and smiled at us. Harrison and King wandered over
with him and his men. I assumed the rest of my family had stayed
back to guard the children.
    He walked over to Miller and me, assessing us
with dark, shrewd eyes. “You are not a child anymore,” he declared
as if I’d been waiting for his verdict.
    “I know.”
    His eyes flashed with humor. “You take after
her, don’t you? You have her fire.”
    “Who?”
    “The Reagan.” He pronounced Reagan with two
long ee s. “ Si , she is like this. She is a… how do you
say… fireball.”
    I thought he might have meant firecracker , but I didn’t correct him. Fireball worked too
when it came to Reagan.
    He took another step toward me, but his eyes
shifted to Miller. “And you have grown too, I see. You look like
your father.”
    I dropped my blade and wrapped my hand around
Miller’s forearm without thinking. Miller surprised me by not
moving. At the mention of Matthias, I had expected Miller to murder
Diego, which would have served nobody’s purpose.
    Instead, Miller’s muscles flexed and rippled
beneath my hand, but he remained still and silent.
    Diego looked him over as if weighing Miller’s
worth. I wanted to snap at Diego. I wanted to tell him every good
and worthy thing about Miller. But I held silent.
    We had just entered the lair of a beast. And
maybe we were safe here. Maybe we’d conned the beast into believing
we had mutual interests and common enemies, but he was still a
beast. He could still kill. He could still maim.
    He could feed us to his Zombie army without
any guilt or remorse.
    And we needed this beast to get us through
the rest of Mexico.
    Diego’s gaze darkened and his smug grin
turned into a dangerous frown. “Do you want my land too?” He leaned
into Miller, threatening Miller’s tentative hold on his patience.
“Do you want to take what’s mine? Do you want my world?”
    “What do you want?” Miller countered,
dropping his voice low so my brothers couldn’t hear him. “Do you
want my land? The world that’s rightfully mine ?”
    Diego rocked back on his heels and something
like surprise lifted his eyebrows. “Rightfully yours?”
    The corner of Miller’s lips twitched. “When
my father dies, I’m his rightful heir. The only one that has any
claim on that land.”
    Breath left my lungs in a whoosh of surprise.
My fingernails dug into Miller’s forearm and I knew he felt my
reaction.
    But he didn’t look at me. I could only see
his profile